2010 Newsletter

First Avenue Ministries

Affiliated with

The Church At Prison, Inc,

“Washing dirty feet for the Lord”

Dear family and friends,

It has been far too long since we wrote a newsletter; I would be embarrassed to go back and check. However continued procrastination is not going to improve the situation. So marching through our life, let us start the progression.

Thanksgivings

First our thanks to each one of you for your prayers and encouragement. It has been a challenging year, but we have felt your arms about us as we faced tests and trials in our ministries and in health issues. There is no doubt in our minds that the Lord has led us into the Promised Land of His Kingdom and blessed us with His Presence.

Family

Betty, John and Mike ( a two year old pug-peke mix) continue leading a non-serene life in Chester Depot with an occasional quiet evening. Various activities, discussed below, make sure that the phone is always ringing, that there are various meetings and functions to attend and those that we serve make sure we have not forgotten them.

Tony, Heidi, Sandy and Marieke have moved to Bozeman, Montana, just 90 minutes from Yellowstone National Park. Tony is back in coaching as Director of the Alpine Racing Program at the Bridger Ski Area and loves it. He qualified about a year ago as a FIS delegate and that also keeps him busy officiating at races across the continent. The girls are adjusting to their new life away from all their friends in Steamboat and both very active in theater and music.

Kim, Jeff and Alexis are still at the inn, struggling in the economy, but making a go of it. Lexie has developed into a dauntingly precocious six year-old with her parents firmly under control and the local school beginning to acquiesce.

David, Lynne, Libby, Sam and Jack continue to expand the product line at the bakery. David's latest addition was a hard ice cream maker. (We hope some of the product actually makes it to the display case) Libby is a freshman at Bentley University majoring in business, Sam is a junior and Jack a freshman at Burr and Burton Academy.

Ministry

We are now affiliated with The Church at Prison, a statewide network of prison ministers. The network has many benefits by giving us direct connections to ministers in every prison in the state. One of the chief benefits is that when an individual is being transferred from Springfield to another facility, we can make sure that the minister there is aware and can contact him. It also facilitates our work with ex-inmates who are being released into the Springfield area. We are currently working with three women in that category. Another benefit is that we are now included in their 501(c)3 non-profit status. That certainly assists in making the funds stretch a bit farther.

About a year and a quarter ago, the decision was made to split the ministry that had been carried on jointly with another couple. Betty and I now provide two services weekly for the inmates at Springfield; a worship service on Wednesday evenings where recently Scott and Mona Frye have been joining us as a worship team, and a Friday afternoon discipleship study. We have been joined in the latter by Bill Cooley, a newly found brother in the Lord. Our goal in both services is to equip the men to go out into the living units as missionaries in bonds. To this end, there is good deal of emphasis on spiritual disciplines, learning to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in a hostile environment and training in speaking the message of the love, grace, and mercy of Jesus Christ in word and deed.

We continue to minister to a number of men and women who have been released into the area, mentoring, assisting in locating housing, providing transportation, seeking work, furnishing leads to resources, and on and on and on. Our transitional housing work came to a temporary halt last spring due to a disagreement of the interpretation of DoC rules for volunteers. It has since been resolved but we have not had a resident since the end of March, 2010.

John has been active on the Reparative Justice Board, an effort to divert first-time and low-level offenders from progressing further into the criminal justice system. There have been some encouraging outcomes but by and large, it is a heart wrenching and sometime stomach turning window on the underside of our society.

We probably will not have any residents for the foreseeable future due to a recently added ministry that is quite time consuming. In April, we were approached by one of the local banks to see if we would be willing to help an elderly lady straighten out her checkbook. No problem, but we soon found ourselves being requested by the state agency for elder abuse to become temporary guardians while things got sorted out. The sorting out included our appointment as Guardians ad litem (in total) and a rapid descent into a maelstrom of familial dysfunction. Without going into more details than any of you should be subjected to, just get in touch with us if you are ever faced with a similar situation. We have some dos and don'ts for you! We are continuously buoyed by the prayers and support of a number of dear friends and by the knowledge that we are called to visit the sick and comfort the lonely. It also helped when the Lord showed me recently that Ephesians 3:20 applied directly to this situation. He envisions the impossible outcome and then empowers us to accomplish it through Him. WOW!!

Centurions and The Fellowship of Ailbe

I (John) continue to take and teach online courses as part of the Centurion's program. This is a very fruitful and beneficial activity as I work with individuals across the continent; the reward of teaching is a deepened understanding of the Scriptures. Lyle Groenveld (Washington State) and I are about to begin our fourth session of team teaching next month, taking our third foray into the Gospel of the Kingdom. Any Centurions reading this, it is the 1^st Tuesday of the month at 9:15PM Eastern—come and join us.

Another activity was being accepted as a member of the Fellowship of Ailbe; a community of men who are seeking to encourage and train leaders of the Church using today's technology but through the techniques and precepts of the Celtic Christian revival. We are trying to develop a virtual community of disciple making leaders to renew the emphasis on pastoring and shepherding that enabled the longest lasting and widest spread revival in the history of the Church. A major part of our efforts is to develop a network of mutual mentor/mentees using teleconferencing to create relationships between men that will foster disciple making in the local churches. If you are interested, our website is www.ailbe.org. Come and take a look.

Lastly, I have published a book, Voices Together, Vol.1; prayers based on Psalms 1-75 (Vol 2 should be out shortly) and is available at the website.

Enough! I either stop here or blither on for several more pages.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Love in Christ, Betty and John.

The Fellowship of Ailbe, practicing a Celtic Christianity “Go and Show” model of mission,

The Fellowship of Ailbe is missional after the Celtic tradition. That is an underlying approach best described as “Go and Show” as opposed the the modern Evangelical church using a “Come and Listen” style of mission.

Our challenge in the Fellowship is to extend that rich and powerful understanding of Matthew 28:19-20 into the post-Christian and pagan culture of the 21^st Century in a way that is true to our Lord Jesus Christ and speaks in a language that can be understood by our audience. We are also working in a virtual environment that restricts eyeball to eyeball contact and requires us to search out new methods of communicating the Gospel, given once for all.

There are five major missional distinctives of Celtic Christianity ministry¹ :

1. Going out into the community to “identify with the people, engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry and witness.”
2. Focus on monastic community that prepares people to “live with depth, compassion, and power in mission.” These monastic communities are based upon:
   1. Living to “Rule”
      1. A personal rule outlining each Member's commitment to the other Members to follow a deliberate program of spiritual disciplines and to participate in the life of the community.
   2. Anamchara (soul friendship)
      1. A deep friendship between two individuals based on mutual encouragement, mentoring, and accountability.
   3. Penance in which an undesirable behavior is deliberately replaced by practicing a desirable behavior.
   4. Theology which is:
      1. Trinitarian
      2. Eschatological
      3. Creational
3. A role of imaginative prayer in all settings by
   1. Regular practice of praying and singing the Psalms, and other Scriptures.
   2. Developing a steady state of prayer, to make praying without ceasing a normal mode of life.
   3. Seeking the voice of God in all aspects of Creation.
   4. Opening our hearts and souls to the Unseen through prayer and meditation.
4. Hospitality in the monastic community inviting all people as guests
   1. in a community of friendship.
   2. through service to them.
   3. through prayer as we invite the Holy Spirit into their lives.
5. A focus on the experience of those who seek God in the church: you first establish community with people. Within fellowship engage in conversation, ministry, prayer and worship. In time they come to believe and are invited to commit.

1The skeleton of the five distinctives is quoted in a Celtic Model of Ministry, the Reawakening of Community Spirituality, by Jerry C Doherty, The Liturgical Press, pg xiv and were taken from The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity can reach the West...Again, by George G. Hunter, pg 47-55

A meditiation on Psalm 33:6-12

Thia passage is one of the many places in the Psalms that extol the richness and diversity of the Creation. A dear friend and member of the Fellowship of Ailbe, Jesse Slusher, applied his gifts to the development of a short video that truly brings the words of the Psalmist to live. Enjoy with me.

Musings from Vermont on a Lord's Day afternoon.

The beautiful leaves from a few days ago are gone, stripped by heavy rains and gusty winds, blown away towards New Hampshire. The bare sticks of the maples reach heavenward, revealing the gentle Green Mountains that have been hidden by the trees since spring. Now the summer's infinite shades of green are being replaced by a variety of browns and grays, all selected from God's palette. Vermont is putting on its late fall garb, an easing into the stark whites of winter.

I have been blessed for eight years by this view from my living room window. The sheer display of color, of shadings and hues, reflect God's sense of beauty and His creativity. I know that what I see is a speck, a fleck, a mote, an infinitesimal sampling of that beauty and creativity, but it is all I can comprehend and absorb. This sampling of the Shalom that is to come with the new heaven and new earth, gives me incentive to press on with the work of the Kingdom of God. It shows me that God has a love of order and harmony that transcends the rage and destruction that is the hallmark of the kingdom of Man.

Thank You, LORD, for this gift of a Lord's Day afternoon to be refreshed and rejuvenated